Categories: Articles

Lessons We Can Learn From How Teens Manage Technology

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

Teens are much smarter with technology than most of us are willing to acknowledge. The other month, there were a lot of stories in the mainstream media about apps that enabled kids to take pictures and share media that could be hidden from parents. Apps that looked like calculators, but were really password protected storage areas. Now, teenagers are going public with how they handle social media. For “everyone else” they have the traditional Instagram and Facebook accounts, but for their close friends, they have Finstas – or, “Fake Instagram.” These accounts are their “real accounts.” The ones that are private for just their friends. This may be a smart move for adults who want to separate real family and friends from the rest?
In 2005, Alex Tew came up with a brilliant idea. He decided make a million dollars by building a webpage that was based on a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid… and he sold each pixel for a dollar = one million dollars. It worked. In fact, it did so well that he sold the final 1000 pixels on eBay, and it pushed the total well passed the $1 million mark. Well, last week Andre Alberto from Lisbon, Portugal begun an attempt to be the world’s first crowdfunded millionaire through a campaign he recently launched on Kickstarter. It involves backers pledging amounts between €1 and €7,000 to get rewards such as a signed book, a meet up in Portugal, and the chance to marry him. So far… not so good. While he’s getting a lot of media attention, only €1,170 has been pledged. So, what do you think? Gimmick or smart move?
App of the week: Laundry Day.

Listen here…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.